WILL BREAD HUNGER END THE BRITISH?

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2786, 27 September 1910, Page 7

WILL BREAD HUNGER END THE BRITISH?

An expert has declared that the

rise in the price of wheat "'is not the transitory result of market manipulation and 'corners,' but of perfectly natural and irresistible causes." The truth is we are for the first time beginning to feel individually the effect of a great natural process—the race which started long •ago between the population of the world and the growth of the world's wheat supply. In this race the growth of the world's population has been outstripping the growth of its wheat -food production, and the consequence has been a total growing shortage, in spite of the opening of vast new areas in Canada and Ar-

gentina. In this connection one of the chief newspapers in Great Britain has cheerfully remarked in a leading article that, after all, we need not be alarmed as to the difficulty in increasing the supply of wheat, since population would in any case adapt itself to the food supply. This is true, indeed ; there will never be more human beings than there is food to feed. But the question is, How will the population be kept down ? Is it to be by the awful and bloody processes of Nature,, or by the conscious, provident, and humane methods of man ? The expert already quoted declares \ that "former wheat exporting ! countries like the United States, as ' well as Russia and India, while their production remains high, are sending far less abroad under the pres- : sure of their own increasing needs, j In this connection it may be record- ( ed that a great American corn factor declares that in twenty-five years the United States will want all, or very nearly all, of her wheat production for herself, and will have

,f very little indeed to send to England." SUPPOSE AMERICA DENIES ENG.B LAND WHEAT ! e In 1898, Sir William Crookes was n quoted, as saying that "a permanently higher price for wheat is, I e fear, a calamity that ere long must n be faced." As everyone knows, this 0 prophecy is now being fulfilled. a Sir William also declared that ex- '" ports of wheat from the United Status are only* of present interest, and that "'within a generation the " ever-increasing population of the s United States will consume all the wheat grown within its borders, and * will be driven to import, and, like ourselves, will scramble for a lion's s share of the wheat crop of the world." Next to the United States, e Russia is the greatest wheat export--1 er, but the Russian peasant population increases more rapidly than any e other in Europe, even though it is 5 inadequately fed, and this source of 1 supply must fail ere very long. 3 As Sir William points out, the Caucasian—our—civilisation is, in--5 deed, founded upon bread. "Other races, vastly superior to us in numbers, but differing widely in material and intellectual progress, are eaters of Indian corn, rice, millet, and other- ■ grains ; but none of these grains has 1 the food value, the concentrated health-sustaining power of wheat." Sir William's argument was, and is, ! that we must learn how to fix the nitrogen of the atmosphere—that is to say, how to combine it in forms on which the plant can feed. The fixation of nitrogen is a question of the not far distant future. Unless we can class it among certainties to come, and we here quote Dr. C. W. Saleeby, an economist and sociologist of considerable mark, the great Caucasian race wifl cease to be foremost in the world, and will be squeezed "out of existence by races to whom wheaten bread is not the staff j of life. i By methods of fixing the atmospheric nitrogen, the output of the land devoted to wheat can, Dr. Saleeby admits, be doubled or trebled, but it is evident that even then there will be an impassable, limit. We have to face, indeed, the evident but unconsidered fact that there must be a maximum possible human population for this finite earth," whether a bread-eating popu- ' lation or any other. j It is of great interest to the British reader to look at the question briefly from his point of view. At the present time our wheat production is no more than one-eighth of our needs, and in twenty-five years, when the supply from the United States will probably have ceased, ! we shall require 40,000,000 quarters I of wheat per annum. Yet already, in time of peace, careful observers * declare that 30 per cent, of our own population are living on the verge of starvation. Our available supply ' of food of all kinds at any moment would last us about three weeks. How many of us realise what a war would mean for the country ? i Maltbus, whose ideals Dr. Saleeby < thinks have been much distorted, 1 found in all life the constant ten- 1 dency to increase beyond the nourish- 1 meut available. In a given area, not \ even the utmost imaginable improve- c ment in developing the resources of < the soil can or could keep pace with f the unchecked increase of population, t This applies alike to Great Britain ' and to the whole world. At bottom, < then, the check on population—and < this is true of bacteria as well as men—is want of food, notwithstand- 1 ing that this is never the immedi- i ate and obvious check except in <

cases of actual famine. There mast, therefore, concludes Dr. Saleeby's paper, be a struggle for existence, and, as Darwin and Wallace saw, it follows as a necessary truth that, to use Spencer's term, '"the fittest must survive." The question is whether we are to accept starvation as, at bottom, the

factor controlling population, which, in any case, must be, and is, controlled, or whether we can substitute something better. The single precept of mis much maligned thinker was "do not marry till yon have a fair prospect of supporting a family" —a fairly decent and respectable doctrine, says our medical authority.— "Popular Science Sittings."